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On a recent Saturday, several hundred people flocked to Los Angeles International Airport and spent most of the day looking at airplanes — all because they follow the same airline-industry blog. That sentence may require some explanation even if youve read a post or two on Cranky Flier, the commercial-aviation chronicle written by industry veteran Brett Snyder. The avgeek gathering Snyder calls Cranky Dorkfest began in 2011. Snyder, based nearby in Long Beach, decided to see if any of his readers — many of whom regularly show up in comments on his blog under aviation-related pseudonyms — wanted to meet up. So Snyder suggested a triangular park between LAXs Runway 24R and an In-N-Out Burger that offers some of Americas finest planespotting. The original plan was really just me putting out a blog post saying that I was going to go to the park across from In-N-Out and hoped some people would join me for burgers, spotting, and conversation, Synder says in an email. A handful did. And then it just kept growing from there. The idea took off because the notion of people meeting online over a shared fascination and then connecting IRL shouldn’t be that strange. Especially if their meeting point happens to revolve around their common interest. Soon, airlines, flight-tracking apps and services, and Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) started taking notice and finding ways to participate, perhaps because of or despite its self-mocking moniker of Dorkfest. (I got some raised eyebrows explaining the event to friends.) “You have to own it, says Snyder, whose job title at his travel agency, Cranky Concierge, is president and chief airline dork. Plane selfies The 2025 edition of Dorkfest began early Sept. 13 at a ramp on the south side of the airport hosted by LAWA. The authority required attendees to register in advance; a week later, signups maxed out at 500. Attendees had the treat of two parked airliners to be explored at length: American Airlines sent a Boeing 737-800 in its throwback Astrojet livery and Delta Air Lines loaned an Airbus A350-900. With almost everybody wanting a flight-deck selfie, boarding took awhile. LAWA catered breakfast from the local favorite Randys Donuts and brought a DJ, who spun location- and subject-relevant tracks like A Tribe Called Quests I Left My Wallet In El Segundo and the Red Hot Chili Peppers Aeroplane. A large fraction of the attendees ignored all of that to stand next to a fence separating the area from an active taxiway so they could take in the view of arrivals and departures on LAXs two southern runways — plus a Boeing 747-8 freighter operated by Cathay Pacific Cargo taxiing nearby. I hope people have travel plans soon A few hours later, it was time to head over to the In-N-Out thats become my favorite fast-food joint in the world. People opened ride-hailing apps for the short ride and waited for their Ubers and Lyfts to roll up, which is when I ran into a friend from grade and high school, an aviation lawyer I hadnt seen since March of 2020. The lunchtime scene at this In-N-Out is always great, since that block overlaps with the start of a wave of arrivals of widebody jets from overseas. Even with a few hundred extra people added to the noon crowd, the place remained as marvelously efficient as Ive seen it in past visits to L.A. As attendees cycled their gaze from flight-tracking apps to each Boeing 777 or Airbus A350 arriving from places like Shanghai, Paris, Rome or Singapore, Snyder conducted a raffle drawing, with prizes contributed by a flock of companies. Struggling to be heard over the roar of jet engines even with the help of a megaphone, Snyder cracked jokes as he called out winners of such goodies as a subscription to the aviation-industry publication The Air Current, free tickets or frequent-flyer miles from various airlines (I hope people have travel plans soon, he said while awarding 20,000 points from bankrupt Spirit Airlines), models of planes, and bundles of airline swag. One airline had a formal presence: Recently merged Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines sent reps to hand out their inflight snacks of pretzel mix, Biscoff cookies, and POG (passionfruit orange guava) juice to any attendees not already stuffed from animal style Double-Doubles. Other years have seen more in-person airline participation. Snyder recalls 2019s Dorkfest, when United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz showed up and handed out burgers.The day wrapped up with an event hosted by NYCAviatio at a food hall called the Proud Bird, situated across Aviation Boulevard from LAXs other pair of runways. The plane that drew the most cheers out of the audience was not any passenger airliner but a more esoteric airframe: a McDonnell-Douglas MD-11 freighter operated by FedEx, the final version in a series of triple-engine widebodies dating to the DC-10. That New York aviation-enthusiast group had started its own annual SpotLAX meetup a few years after Dorkfest began, then opted to align that gathering with Snyders. We realized we should keep doing that, Snyder says. It really increased the opportunities for people to participate and helped justify travel from further away to come join. The two farthest origin points for 2025s Dorkfest, per a map at the Great Circle Mapper site generated from attendee input: Shizuoka, Japan and Haikou, China. Most real-world meetups of online communities dont draw people from that far awaywith the exception of such high-profile gatherings as the NASA Socials that the space agency hosts for launches. On one I joined for the penultimate space shuttle launch in 2011, I was struck by how readily strangers agreed to coordinate on shared housing nd rental-car transportation. Often, these gatherings are much smaller-scale, like Wikipedia-editor meetups, the weekly happy hours coordinated by some local Reddit forums (see, for example, those at r/washingtondc) or just two members of the FlyerTalk frequent-travel forum recognizing each others yellow FT luggage tags in an airport lounge. It may be weird showing up to these events. But embrace the weirdness and the chance to get to know strangers who maybe arent so distant from you. As Snyder says: The best moments are meeting people who I’ve never seen other than in discussion online.
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E-Commerce
A new study out Wednesday in the journal Nature from the University of California, Berkeley found that women are systematically presented as younger than men online and by artificial intelligencebased on an analysis of 1.4 million online images and videos, plus nine large language models trained on billions of words. Researchers looked at content from Google, Wikipedia, IMDb, Flickr, and YouTube, and major large language models including GPT2, and found women consistently appeared younger than men across 3,495 occupational and social categories. (Note: It’s possible that filters on videos and women’s makeup may be adding to this age-related gender bias in visual content.) Study data showed not only are women asystematically portrayed as younger than men across online platforms, but this distortion is strongest for content depicting occupations with higher status and earnings. It also found that Googling images of occupations amplified age-related gender bias in participants beliefs and hiring preferences. “This kind of age-related gender bias has been seen in other studies of specific industries, and anecdotally . . . but no one has previously been able to examine this at such scale,” said Solne Delecourt, assistant professor at the Berkeley Haas School of Business, who co-authored the study along with Douglas Guilbeault from Stanford’s business school and Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan from Oxford’s Autonomy Institute. “Even though the internet is wrong, when it tells us this fact about the world, we start believing it to be true,” Guilbeault said. “It brings us deeper into bias and error.” Looking specifically at ChatGPT, researchers found when the AI chatbot generated and analyzed some 40,000 resumes, it assumed women were younger by 1.6 years and had less work experience, while rating older male applicants as more qualifiedeven though the data shows no systematic age differences between men and women in the workforce. But perhaps the greatest takeaway from the study is that this biased view online reinforces inaccuracies about, and stereotypes of women, which can end up creating a distorted feedback loop between online perceptions and AI, that moves from the internet into the real worldwhich can then result in widening the gap between men and women in the job market.
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E-Commerce
Too late. Too expensive. Too bland. Too antiquated. Too much of the same. There are just too many toos when it comes to Teslas new “cheap” cars, which the company announced on Oct. 7. Its highly anticipated “affordable models” are just stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y variants that come in at a more expensive price point than the current 2025 models. Some marketing genius labeled them as Standard, but judging the cars against cheaper, better models from automakers around the world, Tesla’s newest offerings can’t even claim that benign adjective. The truth is, these cars are terrible news for the company. With its reputation in tatters thanks to Musks brand suicide-by-Trump and years of quality complaints, technology stagnation, and tired design, Tesla really needed a big bang to counteract its quickly shrinking market share. Judging by the reaction online, that big bang looks more like a Starship exploding on the launch pad. The consensus is that these new models are just manufacturing cost-cutting without the price tag cuts. Unsurprisingly, Tesla stock fell 4% yesterday after the announcement. It will rebound, Im sure, but my prediction is that it will crash way harder when new sales data comes in the next two quarters after people realize how much of a dud these models are. [Photo: Tesla] Cant compete The Hyperloop-sized fact of the matter is that there is just no way these new cars are going to beat the competition. Lets put aside their lackluster trimmings and repetitive design to focus on price for now. The new cars aren’t affordable at all: The Model Y Standard starts at $39,990 and the Model 3 Standard at $36,990. These prices cant compete in the market today. Chinese brands like BYD and NIO destroy them at every single metric. They already offer a better price for a superior technology than Teslas expensive models, which is why the companys market share is in free fall everywhere Chinese EVs are on the road. Many Chinese models have longer-lasting and more durable batteries, better trimmings, better finishes, and even free autonomous driving for life for many models at genuinely affordable prices. [Photo: BYD] Worldwide EV market king BYD sells vehicles starting below $30,000 globally, with models like the Dolphin priced at around $26,700 and the Seagull compact selling for under $10,000 in China. The company has outsold Tesla globally for the last four quarters, selling about 1.6 million all-electric vehicles through Q3 2025nearly 400,000 more than Teslas 1.22 million units in the same period. But you dont even need to go compact to see the price difference: NIO’s new Onvo L60 SUV starts at $30,439 while offering more interior space and equivalent range. How can Tesla every hope to beat them? Even American competitors offer better options. The Chevrolet Equinox EV starts at $34,995 with 319 miles of range, undercutting Tesla’s Model Y by $5,000 while offering traditional amenities Tesla removed. You know, like FM radio and powered mirrors. Tesla’s new models dont have FM radio and the new Standard Model 3 is now the only car sold in America with manual side mirrors, as the car publication The Drive points out. [Photo: Chevrolet] Japan has cheaper and better EVs, too, like the Toyota bZ4X SUV, which starts at $38,520. The Europeans, too, if you want really inexpensive. The Dacia Spring starts at about $19,500. The Citrën ë-C3 begins at about $23,000. I can go on and on, but you get the idea. Worse yet: The new Teslas cant even compete with its existing models. Thanks to Musk’s Trump supportwhich brought the elimination of federal tax creditsthe Standard models are more expensive than Tesla’s cars cost just days earlier, as EV car blog Electrek points out. The Model Y costs $37,490 after credits, about $2,000 less than the Standard version. Tesla somehow managed to launch cheaper cars that are more expensive. Well done, Elon. Heres your $1 trillion cookie. [Photo: Tesla] Dollar General cars without the price cuts Thats the other thing with the new models. The company has systematically removed features across every category in these vehicles. The Model Y, for example, has dropped its range by 36 miles to 321 miles. Some of them as basic as FM radio and powered mirrors, no heated second-row seats, and no adaptive high beams. Cars.com counts a total of 15 missing features. Gone are the LED light bars that were Teslas signature, according to The Autopian. The Model Y now looks like a generic crossover with simple headlamps. Inside, Tesla swapped premium vegan leather for cheap textile inserts, removed the rear touchscreen that passengers actually used and kids loved, and even eliminated ambient lighting throughout the cabin. The audio system drops from 15 speakers with a subwoofer to just seven speakers. The rear seats fold manually instead of electronically. The front trunk shrinks by a cubic foot and loses its waterproof lining. The engineering cutbacks are even more worrying. Tesla downgraded the suspension from its frequency-selective dampers back to basic passive shocks. Why? No idea. But it’s particularly shocking because the suspension has been a big point of disgust for many users and car testers, like MotorTrend, who hated it. Gone is the lane-centering autosteer too, a major safety feature in a car brand known for being one of the most dangerous cars on the road. The number of cameras have been reduced, too. And, of course, no autonomous driving (which may be a blessing in disguise, given the deficient state of the technology, still far away from Musks self-driving sci-fi promises). [Photo: Tesla] As one industry expert observed: “It’s challenging to justify such a lengthy list of missing features when the price difference is merely $5,000 from the next trim up. As a Redditor pointed out in one of the many threads slamming the new models, it feels like Tesla dont actually want to sell these carsperhaps it’s a move to get consumers to upgrade to the next, more expensive model. If thats the case, its a strange way to get back into the leadership position. One that doesnt seem to justify Musks astronomical pay package. Perhaps these new models are an admission that he has given up completely on cars and he thinks that robots and autonomous cabs will save his company from oblivion. But that bet is now more dangerous than ever. Maybe that would be a possibility if Tesla had all this technology working and deployed, but his promise about Tesla Robotaxis being everywhere in 2026 still feels completely unfeasible, no matter what some analysts are smoking. Its still testing the cars in Austin and the Bay Area, while competitors Waymo and Apollo are establishing full services in cities worldwide. And his promise about Optimus also shipping by the gazillion next year, well, LOL is all I can say. The latest demo in September was toe-curling embarrassing. But I digress. We were talking about cars. We’re talking about new Teslas that are not affordable, but are cheap. But hey, at least have arrived, even if it is years too late. And even if their arrival is nothing more than a reminder that Tesla is once again ceding its reputation as an innovator.
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E-Commerce
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